The Lessons Learned From Hurricane Sandy

People affected by Hurricane Sandy's wrath are trying to get their lives back to normal. But before the U.S. moves on, PM contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds says we need to take a hard look at what needs to be done to prevent this disaster from happening again.

It's been more than a week since Hurricane Sandy struck New York. Power is still out in many places, and citizens in numerous locations are cold, hungry, and in some cases short of drinking water and other crucial supplies. Property damage has been incredible. So, what lessons can we learn from this experience for next time?

I think these fall into two categories: short-term preparation and long-term preparation. And these categories can be divided into things the government should do, and things that the rest of us should do.

Short Term

On the short-term front, the most important thing the government should do is to judge the situation correctly and to respond appropriately in terms of warnings and evacuations. The government didn't do so well on that one where Sandy was concerned.

Weather blogger Brendan Loy, who sounded the alarm regarding the devastation that accompanied Hurricane Katrina in 2005 days ahead of government and most media, faults New York's Mayor Bloomberg for waiting too long to order evacuations and for underplaying the extent of the danger. He wrote the following: "Waiting until almost noon on the day before the storm, mere hours before the subways closed, to order an evacuation of the most vulnerable low-lying areas in New York City ('Zone A'), was a huge mistake, not just in retrospect, but at the time, as I wrote then." By contrast, "Gov. Christie was pretty emphatic in taking Sandy seriously and urging others to do so. He criticized the mayor of Atlantic City for being less so."

Loy also faults the National Weather Service for not issuing a hurricane warning for Sandy, even though the storm's track and intensity were forecast with incredible accuracy. "Citing meteorological technicalities related to whether the storm was 'tropical' or 'non-tropical,' the NWS only issued warnings for strong winds and high waters. These warnings amounted to the same thing, really, but didn't pack as much of a punch in terms of spurring public awareness of the threat's severity." Indeed, Loy and many other weather bloggers and meteorologists believe confusion caused by the NWS's decision may have contributed to Mayor Bloomberg's inaccurate pronouncement, roughly 48 hours before the storm hit, that "although we're expecting a large surge of water, it is not expected to be a tropical storm or hurricane-type surge."

When forecasts indicate a storm may be approaching, it's time to begin short-term preparations. By the time you're absolutely sure that there's a catastrophic storm heading for you, it's too late to do much. The government has to start stockpiling emergency supplies where they can reach victims despite storm damage, boarding up windows, and ordering evacuations, and they have to do it early—at a point when things might change and the effort might still turn out to be unnecessary. With Sandy, in some cases this started too late, perhaps because of fears of overhype. Likewise, gasoline supplies, generators, bottled water, and other necessaries should have been prepositioned but weren't. This led to shortages and confusion.

One useful solution would be to maintain permanent stockpiles of food, water, medicines, and other essentials near major population centers (as we did during the Cold War), thus obviating the need to make last-minute moves. This approach also serves as useful protection against events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and terrorist attacks that don't provide much warning.

But the government can't do everything. Citizens didn't prepare as well as they could have, either. New York City is a place where, in normal times, you can get any kind of food you want delivered to your door at any hour of the day or night. But when times aren't normal, you need to have some food in your pantry. You also need a flashlight and a battery or a propane lamp for when the power is out, and enough blankets and warm clothing to get by even when the heat stays off for days. That's basic hurricane preparedness.

People in New York City and other coastal areas that are vulnerable to hurricanes but that see them less frequently than areas like the Gulf Coast need to be better educated on hurricane preparedness. Things like filling gas tanks and stocking up on food and water early can make a big difference. Everyone who's able to get by on his own for another day takes that much more pressure off responders trying to care for those who can't. Some people think of disaster preparation as somehow selfish, but by not being a burden on the system, you free up resources to help others. That's the opposite of selfish.

Long Term

There are important things that the government and the populace should do in the long run too. For the government, we need to see a greater emphasis on hardening infrastructure against events. Hurricane Sandy was not an unforeseeable event— flooding maps prepared five years ago accurately predicted the areas that would be flooded, but despite talk about rising sea levels, not much was done. (Likewise, it seems that hard-hit Staten Island was an afterthought in the immediate disaster response even though, as the lowest-lying borough, it should have been an obvious priority.)

How do we improve things? To start with, by insisting on comparatively minor adjustments like changing building codes to require that boilers and electrical connection boxes not be located in basements, shielding and elevating power transformers and substations against floods, and deploying inflatable plugs to prevent the flooding of subway and highway tunnels could significantly reduce damage from storm surges. Likewise, many inland areas should consider burying key electrical lines to prevent massive blackouts from downed trees, of the sort that New Jersey in particular experienced.

How far you want to go with this depends on your assessment of the risk. Some changes, such as storing up some temporary tunnel plugs, are are relatively cheap. Others, like burying your power lines, are expensive enough that they may not be worth it unless you think that changes in climate and weather patterns mean big storms are likely to happen more often in coming decades.

Those sorts of assessments are hard to do. For one thing, the long-term impact of climate change on hurricane frequency and intensity is unclear. For another, it's impossible to predict when a major storm will bear down on a major city. Prior to Katrina, many in New Orleans took comfort in the fact that previous hurricanes had turned aside and missed the city, thinking that this pattern was evidence of some sort of protection, rather than mere chance. That turned out not to be the case. A "100-year storm" doesn't necessarily occur at 100-year intervals; neither does a 500-year storm. Had the 1938 "Long Island Express" hurricane taken a slightly different turn, it would have impacted New York City as badly as Sandy did.

On a less material note, the chain of command, and procedures for reporting trouble and deploying resources, need to be worked out in advance. Judging from some reports, police and emergency workers in New York City didn't know what to do, or whom to report problems to. That needs to be fixed.

On the nongovernmental level, I'd like to see gasoline stations routinely equipped with backup generators. Without them, power outages mean gasoline shortages. With them, that's not necessarily the case. This makes a huge difference: Gasoline means power for cars, trucks, and home and business generators, while lack of gasoline turns an electrical outage into a societal outage. Other crucial businesses need to think harder about backup power and other important services too. I'd like this sort of change to be voluntary on the part of businesses, but perhaps some encouragement is in order, like tax credits or excusing generator-equipped gas stations from "price gouging" rules. (If enough stations are open and selling gas, prices will be set competitively anyway).

In addition, cellphone towers should be strengthened against hurricane winds and should have enough backup power for at least a few days. The essential role of cellphones and smartphones in disaster recovery has become too great to ignore.

And, in general, the people who design, maintain, and regulate systems need to give more thought to what can go wrong. This isn't just about power, gasoline, water, and communications. It applies to all sorts of things, including food distribution, medicine, and transport. Efficiency is nice, but sometimes the temptation to pare every last ounce of fat from a system means that it lacks the resiliency needed to withstand major shocks. You save a little money when things don't go wrong, but at substantial cost when they do.

As bad as Sandy was—and it was pretty bad—it wasn't anywhere near the worst disaster that could have been. Officials and inhabitants in New York and elsewhere need to take heed of its lessons so as to be better prepared next time.